There’s a moment in nearly every web redesign project that reveals everything you need to know about how it’s all going to pan out. It’s not when the designer delivers their first mockups. It’s not when the developer cracks open their code editor for the first time. It’s way earlier, when someone says, “So, what’s the actual point of all this?”
More often than not, that question comes up too late, or, worse, it’s never asked at all.
The Dark Side of the Designer’s Shadow
As a strategist in the web development space, I’ve watched loads of projects start off full of enthusiasm, only to end up a letdown. And the pattern is depressingly consistent: businesses rush headlong toward the visual appeal of a revamped website, while the strategic foundation, the actual “why” behind all the shiny new things, remains undefined.
Web designers, with their portfolios of stunning interfaces and compelling case studies, naturally get all the attention. Strategy work, on the other hand, feels like homework. It’s data collection, stakeholder interviews, competitive analysis, and documentation. Not exactly the stuff that gets shared to social media or wins awards.
But here’s the thing, after all these years of watching this tension play out: every hour you spend on strategy saves you ten hours of unnecessary design and development hassle.
The Real Cost of Skipping Out on Discovery
When organisations plough straight into redesign without doing the prep, they’re not actually saving time. They’re just solving the wrong problems really efficiently.
Let’s think about what happens when a business launches a redesign without doing the discovery work:
- Marketing teams start asking for features that don’t actually match what customers want
- Design decisions get made based on personal taste rather than user behaviour.
- Developers spend all their time building functionality that the organisation itself doesn’t even need
- Launch dates slip because fundamental questions come up mid-project
- And after it all, the results just aren’t what you were hoping for because you never really defined what “good” looked like
The irony here is just too much. In trying to get things done fast, these projects end up plodding along at a snail’s pace. And in trying to keep costs down, they end up wasting a lot of money on revisions and scope changes.
Want to see what this looks like in the real world? The Australian Bureau of Meteorology recently spent $4 million learning this lesson the hard way. Their redesign launched during severe weather events, exactly when Australians needed reliable access to weather data most. The result? Widespread public backlash, safety concerns, and a case study in what happens when aesthetic modernisation overrides strategic user understanding. Read the full BOM redesign breakdown →
What Real Strategic Discovery Looks Like
Discovery and strategy development is about gathering intelligence in a systematic way that turns your assumptions into real insights you can use.
The whole process starts with getting some essential data from your organisation:
Your Strategic Plan – where is your business headed? We need to know your three to five year vision because your website needs to be built for where you’re going, not where you’ve been. What markets are you getting into? What capabilities are you developing? How is your business model evolving?
Your Brand Strategy – what do you promise to your customers? Who are you in their minds? What do you stand for? How do you stand out from the competition? Your digital presence needs to embody that promise every time.
Your Marketing Communications Plan – how are you currently engaging with your audience? What messages are actually working? What channels are driving results? What conversion paths do you have today? This helps us avoid disrupting what’s working while we fix what isn’t.
Market Research and Customer Insights – this is about grounding everything in reality, rather than just making things up as we go along. Who actually uses your products or services? What problems do they face? What language do they use? How do they make decisions? Real customer data turns generic “best practices” into specific competitive advantages.
Industry Benchmarks and Performance Data – where are you starting from? What are your current conversion rates? How does your traffic compare to the competition? Where do you rank for the important search terms? What does “success” actually look like in numbers and percentages?
Real-World Warning: The BOM’s research showed “overwhelmingly positive” results, yet users revolted at launch. How? They tested in calm conditions, not during the crisis scenarios when the site matters most. This is why discovery must simulate real-world stress conditions, not just idealised use cases. See how testing went wrong →
Turning Data into Direction
This information isn’t just collected for its own sake. It feeds directly into the strategic decisions that shape every part of your digital presence.
Knowing what your organisational goals are means that your website can actually support your business drivers. If you’re trying to move upmarket, your site needs to show premium value. If you’re after volume growth, conversion optimisation takes priority. If you want to build brand awareness in a new sector, content strategy and thought leadership are top priorities.
Your brand promise is not just about visual design; it’s about the whole user experience, content tone, functionality priorities, and even customer support integration. If you’re promising innovation, your digital presence needs to feel forward-thinking. If you’re built on reliability, your website needs to show stability and trustworthiness.
Marketing tactics and customer insights are what tell you which features actually matter. Should you invest in personalisation? Does your audience prefer video content or detailed documentation? Where in the buying journey do prospects need the most support? Data answers these questions, not opinions.
Why You Need to Get the Upfront Work Done
I get the temptation to just skip ahead. Strategy work doesn’t have that instant gratification of seeing your new homepage design. But what you’re asking for when you want to just “get on with designing”, you’re asking your team to make hundreds of decisions, about navigation, content hierarchy, functionality, messaging, calls-to-action, imagery, form fields – without any context to make those decisions well.
Every choice you make without strategic grounding is just a guess. Some of those guesses will be right. Loads won’t. And trying to correct bad guesses after the fact, that’s a whole different ball game.
This is why Comprehensive Discovery is at the Heart of Every Successful Project. We’re not trying to drag projects out but we want to make sure every single dollar and hour you invest actually drives you closer to what you want to achieve.
The Unseen Power of Strategic Planning
You might not see the benefits of planning in a project timeline or a budget spreadsheet, but they show up in the end results:
- Projects that actually meet their launch dates because you’ve got a clear idea of what you’re working towards
- Designs that actually do what you need them to because you knew exactly what you needed to get out of them
- Development budgets that are actually building something useful, not just checking off a shopping list of features
- Projects that meet their goals and expectations because you did the work to make sure you had a clear idea of what that was
- And websites that give you a real edge over your competition because you built them on a deep understanding of what that competition was doing.
The organisations that take strategy seriously aren’t just getting a website, they’re getting a website that makes money. They’ll turn their online presence from just being a cost centre sucking up money into a real growth driver.
The Choice You Face
If you’re thinking of redesigning your website, it’s time to make a choice. You can dive straight into design, racing towards something visible to make progress, hoping the foundation underneath will magically hold up. Or you can start by doing some real discovery work, investing time upfront to make sure every decision you make from here on in actually moves you closer to success.
One approach looks like it’ll save you time, but the other actually does.
It’s not a question of whether strategy matters, every digital project that works has a strategy, either by design or by accident. The question is whether you’ll take the time to make a strategy that’s actually going to help you or just stumble into one through trial and error.
I’ve built my business on the simple idea that strategy gives you a real edge. And in an environment where every business has access to the same tools, frameworks and platforms, it’s the strategy that really separates the websites that are actually worth something from those that might as well not be there at all.
Your website redesign either advances your business goals or is just a huge waste of time and money. The difference is all made before you even start putting pixels on a page.
So before you even start talking about what your new website should look like, ask what it needs to accomplish. The answer to that question, grounded in fact, aligned with what you want to achieve and informed by a deep understanding of your customers – that’s where all the successful projects start.
And yes, I know it might feel like a load of extra work. But trust me, the payoffs are measured in the competitive advantage, the efficiency you gain and the business growth you get. It’s the strategy that makes the difference.
That’s worth doing
Got a website redesign on the horizon? Let’s have a chat about starting with discovery before we even start thinking about design. Knowing where you’re going is a whole lot more important than just rushing to get there.
